Reviews – Page 416 – The Impulsive Buy

REVIEW: Keebler Special Batch Chocolate Caramel Fudge Stripes Cookies

Meghan / May 15, 2018 / Reviews / 7 Comments

As I’m sure that most of my fellow southerners understand, the arrival of May means the start of the hot, humid weather that’s going to be around for the rest of the summer. Most people give up trying to endure the heat and crank up the air conditioner at this point, but I normally try to stick it out until the official start of summer before turning mine on.

So, considering that my house is 87 degrees right now, there’s no way I’m going to turn my oven on to bake anything. Luckily, the grocery store has a wide enough variety of ready-to-eat cookies that I can enjoy a different treat every night of the week without ever having to heat up my kitchen!

Keebler’s Fudge Stripes have been a favorite of mine ever since I was a kid, and I love things that pair chocolate and caramel together, so the idea behind Keebler’s new Special Batch Chocolate Caramel Fudge Stripes sounded awesome to me when I spotted them while I strolled around Walmart, taking in the breeze from their industrial air conditioners.

Once I got them home and actually opened up the bag to grab a handful, though, my expectations started tank fast. First off, they smelled super weird. It’s kind of hard to describe, but they have this buttery, artificial aroma to them that reminds me of microwave kettle corn.

That’s probably due to the caramel fudge coating on them, which I’d say took up about 80 percent of the chocolate shortbread cookie’s surface area. Setting that aside, seeing the abundance of caramel fudge on these cookies made me excited that I was going to get some big caramel flavor from Ernie’s newest creation!

But it was a super let-down. Even though these have a distinct appearance and aroma when compared to the original ones, they taste about the same. The caramel coating got completely lost somehow, and the shortbread cookies only had the very lightest hints of cocoa when I was really searching for it.

That’s a real shame! Chocolate and caramel done right should complement one another like peanut butter and jelly.

In retrospect, these cookies might have tasted better if Keebler had used caramel-flavored shortbread and stuck to dipping it into their standard fudge coating. Something about trying to make the fudge taste like caramel makes the cookie’s entire flavor profile not work.

In any case, if the Keebler elves want to live up to their promise of only making cookies and crackers that are uncommonly good, this is a batch of cookies that needs to head back to the Fac-Tree for some more work.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 6 grams of fat, 60 calories from fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 125 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 11 grams of total sugars, 11 grams of added sugars, 1 gram of protein.)

Purchased Price: $2.48
Size: 11.5 oz.
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Not having to heat up my oven. Sounded like a great idea on the package. They don’t actually taste bad on their own.
Cons: Smell like microwave kettlecorn. No caramel or chocolate taste. They taste like a regular Fudge Stripes cookie. Not being uncommonly good.

REVIEW: Cheetos Stars Summertime Ranch

Denis / May 14, 2018 / Reviews / 4 Comments

Back in the olden days, there were two varieties of Cheetos: regular (crunchy) and puffs.

Those were dark times for snack food lovers, although as someone who lived through that deprived era I guess I didn’t know what I was missing. Perhaps I was even thankful to have two choices, laughing at my parents who grew up with just the regular version of cheezy goodness.

Of course, now there are so many flavors that I doubt even Chester Cheetah himself can keep track, and he seems too cool to care about such things anyway. Enter the latest addition to the list, Cheetos Stars Summertime Ranch.

Unlike many of the recent introductions, this version doesn’t feature any variation of Flamin’ Hot, spicy, fire, jalapeno, habanero or anything of that ilk. And even though cheddar cheese is far down in the ingredients, there is no orange hue and no cheese taste to these star-shaped puffs.

So, what do these have to offer? Well, not a whole lot. Basically, these are plain puffs covered with Cool Ranch Doritos dust. Cheetos and Doritos are both owned by Frito-Lay, so maybe there was some kind of accident where uncoated Cheetos puffs fell into a vat of Cool Ranch dust. Or maybe someone in management just wasn’t feeling very creative and lazily decided to just combine two of their products (but wait, they are star-shaped!). Either way, the ingredient lists of both are strikingly similar.

If you are a devotee of Cool Ranch Doritos, you’ll probably like these but not love them. In puff form, these are not as satisfying as chips. These could have been more interesting with more of the original Cheetos cheese flavor mixed with Cool Ranch or even with the crunchy Cheetos base instead of puffs, but Frito-Lay never asked me. They also have not acted on my perfectly reasonable suggestion to bring Mountain Dew-flavored Cheetos to America. (Yes, that’s a real thing, or was a real thing,

One of my favorite things about original Cheetos is the orange dust on my fingers at the end of a snacking session. Even when the bag is gone, you still get the bonus of licking the magic dust off your digits. (I would tell you that my dog also likes licking Cheetos dust off my fingers, but that would be gross). As for the Summertime Ranch dust, it’s more of a greasy, speckled coating.

I can’t say that I’ve tried every variety of Cheetos, but I’m pretty sure I’ve munched through at least half, and this one lands toward the bottom of the rankings. Ranch flavor goes well with many things — chips, chicken wings, pizza — and I’ve even heard people use it on something called a “salad.”

Maybe it’s because the snack food industry has conditioned me to believe that Cool Ranch goes with chips and cheese flavor goes with puffs, but this flavor flip was a bit of a disappointment.

(Nutrition Facts – About 37 pieces (28 grams) – 160 calories, 10 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 220 milligrams of sodium, 60 milligrams of potassium, 15 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $1.48
Size: 2 5/8 oz. bag
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Nice replication of Doritos Cool Ranch flavor. Pretty cool photo of Chester Cheetah on the bag.
Cons: Lack of any Cheetos cheese flavor. Instead of magical cheese dust on your fingers you just get a greasy coating. Not really anything “summertime” about it.

Cheetos Chips

QUICK REVIEW: Dairy Queen Twix Blizzard

Joe / May 9, 2018 / Reviews / 4 Comments

What is it?

An unceremoniously introduced new Blizzard on the Candy Classics Menu. The Twix Blizzard combines Twix cookie bar pieces and caramel topping in vanilla soft serve.

How is it?

I felt like Charlie Brown trick-or-treating as the candy mix-in was paltry and rock hard. For me, caramel candy bars in ice cream are the concoction of a dentist with kids to put through college. While the chocolate and caramel candy pieces possess the chewing charm of fossilized Grape-Nuts, the travesty is that some bites show the promise of what might have been.

The caramel topping does an adequate job of punching up the base just enough to become more than the standard vanilla fare. The flavor comes alive though when the otherwise subdued ice cream provides the caramel element missing from the milk chocolate and crunchy cookie only pieces of candy. Those infrequent bites deliver on the promise of the Twix Blizzard name with a delicious Dairy Queen spin. With perhaps twice the amount of chocolate and cookie-only candy bits that I received, and with a little more caramel topping, it would be destined for greatness.

Is there anything else I need to know?

They apparently forgot to put Twix in my Twix Blizzard. Maybe that is a bit of sour grapes on my part as Twix is one of my favorite candy bars. But, as you can probably surmise from the photos of the dish itself, the loaded spoon was the only one of its kind. When simple but delicious is your goal, you can’t skimp on the delicious.

Conclusion:

The Twix Blizzard commits the cardinal sin of being stingy with the eponymous mix-in and is further hindered by tooth chipping caramel pieces. The chocolate, cookie, and caramel topping combo proves authentic to the beloved candy bar, but it does not occur often enough to make me channel a nostalgic Yello “Oh Yeah!”

Purchased Price: $3.39
Size: Small
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (Small) 630 calories, 21 grams of fat, 13 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 260 milligrams of sodium, 96 grams of carbohydrates, 0 gram of dietary fiber, 77 grams of sugar, and 13 grams of protein.

Blizzard Dairy Queen Fast Food

REVIEW: Reese’s Outrageous Bar Stuffed with Reese’s Pieces

Marvo / May 9, 2018 / Reviews / 3 Comments

Reese’s new Outrageous Bar is like a Reese’s Nutrageous Bar.

Wait. You don’t know what a Nutrageous Bar is?

Well, I can understand why. It’s a candy bar that gets lost in the Reese’s universe that’s full of peanut butter-filled treats with different sizes, shapes, fillings, and chocolates.

For those who don’t know, the Nutrageous Bar features peanut butter, caramel, and peanuts (hence the nut- prefix) coated in chocolate. And now that you know about it, you can forget about it because the Outrageous Bar, which swaps the nuts with mini Reese’s Pieces, is the candy bar you should remember.

I’ve had the Nutrageous Bar several times and it doesn’t have the same pull as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. But then again, few candy bars do. It lacks an adequate amount of that signature Reese’s flavor. It’s one of those products that makes me wonder why it born in the first place because I’m 99 percent sure that if someone wants a Reese’s fix they’re going to reach for the peanut butter cup or Reese’s Pieces.

Speaking of the candy-coated candy, this isn’t the first time Hershey’s has stuffed Reese’s Pieces into something else. The company added some into the filling of a

I know in the photos it looks as if there’s no advertised peanut butter or caramel, but if you look closer at the photo…

closer…

BOOP YOUR NOSE, you’ll see a skinny layer of peanut butter that boosts the flavor of the many Reese’s Pieces, but without overpowering them. Despite a high level of peanut butter goodness going on, the chocolate coating cuts through it and creates that coveted chocolate and peanut butter combo. As for the caramel, there’s a thin layer in the bar that gives it a bit of gooeyness, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference taste-wise. Although the caramel doesn’t come through, it’s still a sweet treat.

Reese’s Outrageous Bar Stuffed with Reese’s Pieces is a great candy bar. With a nice one-two peanut butter and chocolate punch and a crispiness that the Reese’s Pieces’ candy shell provides, it’s a candy bar worth remembering.

DISCLOSURE: If you’re wondering why the wrappers look so plain, I received free samples of the candy bar a few months ago. So, yes, I could’ve had a review of this months ago, but #procrastination. BOOP YOUR NOSE.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar – 200 calories, 10 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 24 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: FREE
Size: 1.48 oz. bar
Purchased at: Received from Hershey’s
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Another great chocolate and peanut butter combo from Reese’s. Reese’s Pieces’ flavor is more noticeable in this bar than the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with Reese’s Pieces. More interesting than a Reese’s Nutrageous Bar. BOOP YOUR NOSE.
Cons: The caramel’s flavor gets lost among the peanut butter and chocolate.Not better than a original Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

Candy Reese's